Underwriting Transformation Lead, Group Operations

Prudential's purpose is to be partners for every life and protectors for every future. Our purpose encourages everything we do by creating a culture in which diversity is celebrated and inclusion assured, for our people, customers, and partners. We provide a platform for our people to do their best work and make an impact to the business, and we support our people's career ambitions. We pledge to make Prudential a place where you can Connect, Grow, and Succeed.

Job Responsibilities

AI, Data & Technology Ownership (Underwriting)

• Own the Group underwriting AI and advanced analytics strategy, including straight-through processing (STP), decision automation, triage, and underwriter augmentation.

• Define and prioritize AI use cases across Life & Health underwriting, including reflexive questioning, evidence triage, automated decisions, and risk scoring.

• Partner with Group Data, Technology, and AI teams to build and scale underwriting decision engines, rules, and models, ensuring strong data quality, explainability, and governance.

• Drive adoption of AI workbenches and tools to materially improve underwriter productivity and decision quality.

Underwriting Practice & Process Transformation

• Lead a fundamental redesign of Life & Health underwriting practices, shifting from document-driven to data-driven decisioning.

• Simplify and standardize underwriting journeys across markets, including application questions, evidence requirements, case segmentation, and escalation paths.

• Champion fluidless and evidence-light underwriting for standard risks to reduce friction and turnaround time.

• Codify underwriting knowledge into decision logic, rules, and models to reduce dependency on manual judgement.

Risk Appetite, Policies & Thresholds

• Own and lead the review and transformation of Group underwriting risk appetite to enable faster, more automated decisions.

• Redesign and harmonize underwriting policies, medical and financial thresholds, and auto-accept / referral rules.

• Partner with Group Risk, Actuarial, and Reinsurance teams to align underwriting frameworks with capital, pricing, and reinsurance structures.

• Ensure underwriting policies remain robust, auditable, and regulator-ready & compliant across markets.

Customer & Distribution Onboarding Experience

• Make underwriting a competitive advantage by materially improving onboarding speed, simplicity, and transparency.

• Reduce customer and distributor friction by minimizing questions and evidence requirements and enabling faster decisions.

• Partner with Distribution, Product, and Customer Experience teams to support sales conversion and growth.

Market Enablement & Change Leadership

• Act as Group lead for market-level underwriting transformation programs.

• Provide markets with playbooks, frameworks, and transformation roadmaps.

• Lead change management and capability uplift to support adoption of AI-enabled underwriting.

• Define and track KPIs such as STP rate, TAT, productivity, loss ratios, and customer experience.

Job Requirement

• A degree in medical science or equivalent.

• Deep expertise in Life & Health underwriting.

• At least 10 years experience in this industry and function.

• Proven experience leading large-scale underwriting, AI, or data-driven transformation initiatives.

• Strong understanding of underwriting risk appetite, policy frameworks, and governance.

• Experience operating across multiple markets with diverse regulatory environments.

• Ability to translate complex risk concepts into scalable, practical underwriting solutions.

• Team management skills and willingness to travel across Asia and Africa (as needed).

• Desirable: exposure to reinsurance partnerships, AI-driven decision engines, or strategy roles.

• Significant increase in STP rates, underwriter productivity, and speed to decision.

• Meaningful reduction in onboarding friction and evidence requirements.

• Improved portfolio quality and risk outcomes.

• Extensive adoption of AI-enabled underwriting tools across markets.

• Clear and consistent alignment to Group underwriting risk appetite

Prudential is an equal opportunity employer. We provide equality of opportunity of benefits for all who apply and who perform work for our organisation irrespective of sex, race, age, ethnic origin, educational, social and cultural background, marital status, pregnancy and maternity, religion or belief, disability or part-time / fixed-term work, or any other status protected by applicable law. We encourage the same standards from our recruitment and third-party suppliers taking into account the context of grade, job and location. We also allow for reasonable adjustments to support people with individual physical or mental health requirements.